Introduction
Throughout a professional career lasting 50 years, Miles Davis played
the trumpet in a lyrical, introspective, and melodic style, often
employing a stemless Harmon mute to make his sound more personal and
intimate. But if his approach to his instrument was constant, his
approach to jazz was dazzlingly protean. To examine his career is to
examine the history of jazz from the mid-'40s to the early '90s,
since he was in the thick of almost every important innovation and
stylistic development in the music during that period, and he often led
the way in those changes, both with his own performances and recordings
and by choosing sidemen and collaborators who forged new directions. It
can even be argued that jazz stopped evolving when Davis wasn't there to
push it forward.
Davis was the son of a dental surgeon, Dr.
Miles Dewey Davis, Jr., and a music teacher, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis,
and thus grew up in the black middle class of east St. Louis after the
family moved there shortly after his birth. He became interested in
music during his childhood and by the age of 12 began taking trumpet
lessons. While still in high school, he started to get jobs playing in
local bars and at 16 was playing gigs out of town on weekends. At 17, he
joined Eddie Randle's Blue Devils, a territory band based in St. Louis.
He enjoyed a personal apotheosis in 1944, just after graduating from
high school, when he saw and was allowed to sit in with Billy Eckstine's
big band, who was playing in St. Louis. The band featured trumpeter
Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie Parker, the architects of the
emerging bebop style of jazz, which was characterized by fast, inventive
soloing and dynamic rhythm variations. It is striking that Davis fell
so completely under Gillespie and Parker's spell, since his own slower
and less flashy style never really compared to theirs. But bebop was the
new sound of the day, and the young trumpeter was bound to follow it.
He did so by leaving the Midwest to attend the Institute of Musical Art
in New York City (renamed Juilliard) in September 1944. Shortly after
his arrival in Manhattan, he was playing in clubs with Parker, and by
1945 he had abandoned his academic studies for a full-time career as a
jazz musician, initially joining Benny Carter's band and making his
first recordings as a sideman. He played with Eckstine in 1946-1947 and
was a member of Parker's group in 1947-1948, making his recording debut
as a leader on a 1947 session that featured Parker, pianist John Lewis,
bassist Nelson Boyd, and drummer Max Roach. This was an isolated date,
however, and Davis spent most of his time playing and recording behind
Parker. But in the summer of 1948, he organized a nine-piece band with
an unusual horn section. In addition to himself, it featured an alto
saxophone, a baritone saxophone, a trombone, a French horn, and a tuba.
This nonet, employing arrangements by Gil Evans and others, played for
two weeks at the Royal Roost in New York in September. Earning a
contract with Capitol Records, the band went into the studio in January
1949 for the first of three sessions which produced 12 tracks that
attracted little attention at first. The band's relaxed sound, however,
affected the musicians who played it, among them Kai Winding, Lee
Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, J.J. Johnson, and Kenny Clarke, and
it had a profound influence on the development of the cool jazz style on
the West Coast. In February 1957, Capitol finally issued the tracks
together on an LP called Birth of the Cool. Davis, meanwhile, had moved
on to co-leading a band with pianist Tadd Dameron in 1949, and the group
took him out of the country for an appearance at the Paris Jazz
Festival in May. But the trumpeter's progress was impeded by an
addiction to heroin that plagued him in the early '50s. His performances
and recordings became more haphazard, but in January 1951 he began a
long series of recordings for the Prestige label that became his main
recording outlet for the next several years. He managed to kick his
habit by the middle of the decade, and he made a strong impression
playing "'Round Midnight" at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1955, a
performance that led the major label Columbia Records to sign him. The
prestigious contract allowed him to put together a permanent band, and
he organized a quintet featuring saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red
Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones who began
recording his Columbia debut, 'Round About Midnight, in October. As it
happened, however, he had a remaining five albums on his Prestige
contract, and over the next year he was forced to alternate his Columbia
sessions with sessions for Prestige to fulfill this previous
commitment. The latter resulted in the Prestige albums The New Miles
Davis Quintet, Cookin', Workin', Relaxin', and Steamin', making Davis'
first quintet one of his better-documented outfits. In May 1957, just
three months after Capitol released the Birth of the Cool LP, Davis
again teamed with arranger Gil Evans for his second Columbia LP, Miles
Ahead. Playing flügelhorn, Davis fronted a big band on music that
extended the Birth of the Cool concept and even had classical overtones.
Released in 1958, the album was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of
Fame, intended to honor recordings made before the Grammy Awards were
instituted in 1959. In December 1957, Davis returned to Paris, where he
improvised the background music for the film L'Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud
(Escalator to the Gallows). Jazz Track, an album containing this music,
earned him a 1960 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance, Solo, or
Small Group. He added saxophonist Cannonball Adderley to his group,
creating the Miles Davis Sextet, who recorded the album Milestones in
April 1958. Shortly after this recording, Red Garland was replaced on
piano by Bill Evans and Jimmy Cobb took over for Philly Joe Jones on
drums. In July, Davis again collaborated with Gil Evans and an orchestra
on an album of music from Porgy and Bess. Back in the sextet, Davis
began to experiment with modal playing, basing his improvisations on
scales rather than chord changes. This led to his next band recording,
Kind of Blue, in March and April 1959, an album that became a landmark
in modern jazz and the most popular disc of Davis' career, eventually
selling over two million copies, a phenomenal success for a jazz record.
In sessions held in November 1959 and March 1960, Davis again followed
his pattern of alternating band releases and collaborations with Gil
Evans, recording Sketches of Spain, containing traditional Spanish music
and original compositions in that style. The album earned Davis and
Evans Grammy nominations in 1960 for Best Jazz Performance, Large Group,
and Best Jazz Composition, More Than 5 minutes; they won in the latter
category.
By the time Davis returned to the studio to make his
next band album in March 1961, Adderley had departed, Wynton Kelly had
replaced Bill Evans at the piano, and John Coltrane had left to begin
his successful solo career, being replaced by saxophonist Hank Mobley
(following the brief tenure of Sonny Stitt). Nevertheless, Coltrane
guested on a couple of tracks of the album, called Someday My Prince
Will Come. The record made the pop charts in March 1962, but it was
preceded into the bestseller lists by the Davis quintet's next
recording, the two-LP set Miles Davis in Person (Friday & Saturday
Nights at the Blackhawk, San Francisco), recorded in April. The
following month, Davis recorded another live show, as he and his band
were joined by an orchestra led by Gil Evans at Carnegie Hall in May.
The resulting Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall was his third LP to reach the
pop charts, and it earned Davis and Evans a 1962 Grammy nomination for
Best Jazz Performance by a Large Group, Instrumental. Davis and Evans
teamed up again in 1962 for what became their final collaboration, Quiet
Nights. The album was not issued until 1964, when it reached the charts
and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance
by a Large Group or Soloist with Large Group. In 1996, Columbia Records
released a six-CD box set, Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete
Columbia Studio Recordings, that won the Grammy for Best Historical
Album. Quiet Nights was preceded into the marketplace by Davis' next
band effort, Seven Steps to Heaven, recorded in the spring of 1963 with
an entirely new lineup consisting of saxophonist George Coleman, pianist
Victor Feldman, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Frank Butler. During
the sessions, Feldman was replaced by Herbie Hancock and Butler by Tony
Williams. The album found Davis making a transition to his next great
group, of which Carter, Hancock, and Williams would be members. It was
another pop chart entry that earned 1963 Grammy nominations for both
Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Soloist or Small Group and Best
Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large Group. The quintet followed
with two live albums, Miles Davis in Europe, recorded in July 1963,
which made the pop charts and earned a 1964 Grammy nomination for Best
Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with Small
Group, and My Funny Valentine, recorded in February 1964 and released in
1965, when it reached the pop charts. By September 1964, the final
member of the classic Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s was in place with
the addition of saxophonist Wayne Shorter to the team of Davis, Carter,
Hancock, and Williams. While continuing to play standards in concert,
this unit embarked on a series of albums of original compositions
contributed by the band members, starting in January 1965 with E.S.P.,
followed by Miles Smiles (1967 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental
Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with Small Group [7 or
Fewer]), Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky (1968 Grammy nomination
for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with
Small Group), and Filles de Kilimanjaro. By the time of Miles in the
Sky, the group had begun to turn to electric instruments, presaging
Davis' next stylistic turn. By the final sessions for Filles de
Kilimanjaro in September 1968, Hancock had been replaced by Chick Corea
and Carter by Dave Holland. But Hancock, along with pianist Joe Zawinul
and guitarist John McLaughlin, participated on Davis' next album, In a
Silent Way (1969), which returned the trumpeter to the pop charts for
the first time in four years and earned him another small-group jazz
performance Grammy nomination. With his next album, Bitches Brew, Davis
turned more overtly to a jazz-rock style. Though certainly not
conventional rock music, Davis' electrified sound attracted a young,
non-jazz audience while putting off traditional jazz fans. Bitches Brew,
released in March 1970, reached the pop Top 40 and became Davis' first
album to be certified gold. It also earned a Grammy nomination for Best
Instrumental Arrangement and won the Grammy for large-group jazz
performance. He followed it with such similar efforts as Miles Davis at
Fillmore East (1971 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a
Group), A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On the Corner, and In
Concert, all of which reached the pop charts. Meanwhile, Davis' former
sidemen became his disciples in a series of fusion groups: Corea formed
Return to Forever, Shorter and Zawinul led Weather Report, and
McLaughlin and former Davis drummer Billy Cobham organized the
Mahavishnu Orchestra. Starting in October 1972, when he broke his ankles
in a car accident, Davis became less active in the early '70s, and in
1975 he gave up recording entirely due to illness, undergoing surgery
for hip replacement later in the year. Five years passed before he
returned to action by recording The Man With the Horn in 1980 and going
back to touring in 1981. By now, he was an elder statesman of jazz, and
his innovations had been incorporated into the music, at least by those
who supported his eclectic approach. He was also a celebrity whose
appeal extended far beyond the basic jazz audience. He performed on the
worldwide jazz festival circuit and recorded a series of albums that
made the pop charts, including We Want Miles (1982 Grammy Award for Best
Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist), Star People, Decoy, and
You're Under Arrest. In 1986, after 30 years with Columbia, he switched
to Warner Bros. Records and released Tutu, which won him his fourth
Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance. Aura, an album he had
recorded in 1984, was released by Columbia in 1989 and brought him his
fifth Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist (on a
Jazz Recording). Davis surprised jazz fans when, on July 8, 1991, he
joined an orchestra led by Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival to
perform some of the arrangements written for him in the late '50s by
Gil Evans; he had never previously looked back at an aspect of his
career. He died of pneumonia, respiratory failure, and a stroke within
months. Doo-Bop, his last studio album, appeared in 1992. It was a
collaboration with rapper Easy Mo Bee, and it won a Grammy for Best
Rhythm & Blues Instrumental Performance, with the track "Fantasy"
nominated for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo. Released in 1993, Miles &
Quincy Live at Montreux won Davis his seventh Grammy for Best Large
Jazz Ensemble Performance.
Miles Davis took an all-inclusive,
constantly restless approach to jazz that had begun to fall out of favor
by the time of his death, even as it earned him controversy during his
lifetime. It was hard to recognize the bebop acolyte of Charlie Parker
in the flamboyantly dressed leader with the hair extensions who seemed
to keep one foot on a wah-wah pedal and one hand on an electric keyboard
in his later years. But he did much to popularize jazz, reversing the
trend away from commercial appeal that bebop began. And whatever the
fripperies and explorations, he retained an ability to play moving solos
that endeared him to audiences and demonstrated his affinity with
tradition. At a time when jazz is inclining toward academia and
repertory orchestras rather than moving forward, he is a reminder of the
music's essential quality of boundless invention, using all available
means. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide